If you haven't gotten the hint, today is all about Llano. The big story is of course Llano's notebook appearance; however, in the coming weeks you'll be hearing a lot more about Llano on the desktop as well. This is AMD's Socket-FM1, the brand new socket that'll be used for desktop Llano parts:

If you read our Computex coverage, the socket should look pretty familiar. Motherboard manufacturers all over Taiwan are busy readying their Socket-FM1 boards for retail release. In fact, there was so much interest in desktop Llano on behalf of the motherboard manufacturers that a number of Socket-FM1 boards and CPUs made their way off the island as Computex ended.

Existing Socket-AM3 coolers will work on FM1 motherboards

By now you may have already seen a lot of information leaked from AMD's Llano presentations, as well as its desktop strategy. In the past few days performance numbers have been revealed as well. While we're hard at work on our full review of AMD's desktop Llano APU, we wanted to chime in with some thoughts on Llano's desktop performance.

AMD isn't ready to disclose pricing or the entire product matrix for Llano on the desktop, but what we do have is the high-end desktop Llano SKU: AMD's A8-3850.

The 3850 has four cores running at 2.9GHz and doesn't support Turbo Core. On the GPU side it has the full Radeon HD 6550D configuration with 400 shader processors running at 600MHz.

I find it funny that people still cry about CPU performance of Llano when it was largely expected to be as it actualy is. Come on people, it's a K10 core on 32nm. The only saving grace was the possibility for high clock speed thanks to the die shrink. However AMD decided otherwise, so no point in arguing.

Most probably there are some technical limitations to the maximum clock speed with the GPU on-die as it is. I hope they solve this for Trinity.

Anyway Llano is good enough for 95% of the general computer users. It has enough CPU power for Office/Web/Video/Internet. The fGPU is good enough for WoW and older games. I can totaly see this as a great computer for my wife (mostly internets, movies, some older games). I even thought Zacate would be enough for her. And that's as casual a computer user as it gets.

Basicaly AMD scored a big OEM hit here. If Intel does not pull any dirty tricks, the Llano APUs should get an even share with the budget SB OEM builds.

I am interested in the 2nd or third generation where the GPU will replace the FPU in the x86 cores. Look at what AMD did with BD. The FPU is shared among the CPU cores. In the future, I expect them to assign SIMD units as FPUs to integer cores on the fly. Now a 16 core/16SIMD (1280SPUs in the current GPU architecture) CPU would be awesome.Reply

The results of AMD's efforts here lead me to conclude that Llano is the ultimate in HTPC performance right now. With this architecture's performance in a mini-ITX form factor, I would find it hard to justify spending up on a larger, costlier discrete GPU system.

This seems to me to also offer a great general computing experience for desktops in the $400-$600 range.

I look forward to seeing what Zambezi can do and, following that, what the Bulldozer-based APUs will be capable of. With any luck, we will end up with another CPU arms race like we had circa 2002-2005.Reply

I may sound technically challenged here, but from what I grasped from Anand's analysis is that as far as CPU performance is concerned the Sandy Bridge would trump the LLano by far. However, I also understand that Llano isnt too bad when its comes to the performance of its internal GPU.

I am looking at buying a medium range gaming desktop and am currently looking at an Intel Core i5 2500k and the MSI GTX560 Twin Frozr II as the graphics card.

My question is that if one is to buy a separate graphics card, I am guessing the performance of the GPU component of the LLano or the Sandy Bridge doesnt really matter, does it? And thus with an external graphics card Sandy Bridge is the obvious choice.Reply

When you review desktop Llano's can you cover multiple screens please? Some of us don't game but are interested in a lower power multiple screen solution for working. I.e. do boards support triple screens now that there's a 6xxx series GPU in there?ThanksReply

The thing that most all of everyone here is not taking into consideration is Direct x. Anand you tested most games under direct x 9. The I3, I5, I7 with HD3000 can only run Dx9 or Dx10 but not Dx11. Llano can run all three. The point is if you purchase Intel Sandybridge and have any Dx11 games you have to buy a discreet graphics card. So an investment into lets say my kids low level gaming PC for Intel is Sandybridge, 1155 socket MB, and a graphics card that costs < $100. The AMD PC - Llano, FM1 socket MB, and a Turks based card HD6670 which costs about $90. Could you please test 2 systems like this? Maybe provide AMD dual graphics game info for games that are Dx10 and 11 since dual graphics does not support Dx9. My request is what in my opinion is a real life buying decision and your technical expertise is much appreciated to help me decide. Reply

1) you ran Llano with only the basic frequency !!! When overclock Llano both cpu & igp parts you have impressive results as below

2) Ran games & programs in resolution 1024 x768. This is very very bad.In this resolution (1024χ768) big part from the results they depend from the CPU part and sandy bridge can be compared with Llano. In resolution that all of us we play today (1920x1080, 1680x1050) the all action undertakes the IGP part.In this resolution IGP (6650D) of Liano it would destroy all intel igp (hd 3000, hd 2000)..... but you have only ran games at 1024x768,....

3) In Llanos platform we can make HYBRID CROSSFIRE with AMD/ATI GPU, HD 6670, HD 6570 ++++In conclusion with the same increase of pecuniary cost that in the case sandy bridge we have also exterior graphic card (5570 or 6570 ), in the case of Llano we will have much better graphic thanks to HYBRID CROSSFIRE with IGP 6550d and exterior HD6570 or HD6670!!!

For this reason Llano kills the sandy in gaming performance, in comparison with incorporated cards (IGP), but still more compared to same exterior ( discrete GPU).Reply